minato matsuri - みなとまつり

wow. i'm logging awfully late today, aren't i? well, that's because school starts an hour later than usual tomorrow because today was big party day.

今週の水曜日と木曜日にみなとまつりがあった。　とても楽しかったけど、今私はすごく眠いでも、パレイドについて書きたいから、まだ眠らない。

i finally managed to get the camcorder hooked up to the vcr-like machine so i could watch some of the parade footage. oh my - how embarassing.

all righty then, time for some AKAFUN!!

right now, hakodate is having their annual minato matsuri, which is a huge deal here, leading to big parades and other such merriment. yesterday was the costume parade, which was good, but the best part was meeting yoshikazu (because amanda and i decided to skip out on the fireworks to go to the arcade), a japanese guy who is freaking hilarious. incidentally, we also ran into him again tonight and ended up eating together, but that's not what i'm focusing on here.

tonight was the akafun parade. akafun, for those that haven't yet had this unique experience, is a traditional japanese loin cloth. so for the parade, all of the guys got wrapped up in a very, shall we say, revealing piece of cloth. the girls luck out and get to wear happi, which are kinda like short japanese shirt kimonos. the guys carry a portable shrine as the girls cheer them on and pour water on them. however, tonight was way too cold to pour water on the poor boys, so we settled for cheering them on and trying to decide who has the nicest butt (which i think the concensus is james, despite amanda's bias for you-know-who). add to the loss of any modesty the guys might have once held the fact that beer is passed out freely amongst the participants, and you soon have a very amusing situation to capture on video (which i did). a couple of people got a little too tipsy and ended up riding on the truck through the parade (amongst other sordid episodes that i'll just gloss over here). hmm, some of the more infamous moments include (in no particular order):

• sato-sensei being way genki
• the sugoku huge fan
• the cross-dressing guys in the other parade float
• who has the best butt contest
• james getting "nice butt" painted on said butt
• spinning the shrine around at the intersections
• getting mobbed by hal and his akafun
• evan and his poses
• joe giving beer showers
• lisa ('nuff said)
• getting bum rushed by patrick
• the nihonjin changing out of the akafun in front of God and everybody
• front and behind pictures
• almost dropping the shrine
• more butt cheeks than i care to remember